The Introversion Forums have word that the indie developer has made its submission to the 2012 Independent Games Festival, but that this is unrelated to any of their previous games, and that it's specifically not Subversion (thanks Rock, Paper, Shotgun). Chris Delay goes on to explain the fate of the "spiritual sequel" to Uplink they unveiled last year while expressing the now somewhat ironic "fear that we'll end up promising things that we can't deliver." Here's the explanation of the game's current state: "Subversion has not been cancelled, but I would certainly forget about it for now. We will be going back to that project eventually, but the first thing I plan to do is gut the thing from top to bottom of all the tech fluff that we forced in over the years. Without a core game it’s all a worthless distraction, and I will NEVER again spend so long making tech for a game without having a solid core game in place first. Subversion needs a total rethink from top to bottom, and some long standing sacred cows need slaughtering." Here's word on what led to this:

Around June last year, we pushed ourselves as hard as we could and made a playable slice of the game, and demonstrated it publicly at the World Of Love conference in London. The demo went well, but was heavily scripted. Internally we had come to realise that somewhere along the 6 years of part-time development, we had lost our way. We couldn’t even remember what sort of game it was supposed to be anymore. We’d ended up with a game that looked and sounded brilliant, classic Introversion with its blue wireframe and sinister faceless characters. But there was a massive gaping hole where you would normally see a “core game”. We’d tried and tried to fill that hole with ambitious tech and experimental systems, but you couldn’t escape it.

In the end, after all that development and years of work, you still completed the bank heist by walking up to the first door, cracking it with a pin cracker tool, then walking into the vault and stealing the money. There was no other way to complete that level. And this would be the essential method by which you would complete every level after that. Technology 1, Gameplay 0 - we’ve made the fatal mistake of having more fun making the game than gamers would ever have playing it.

Some years ago I remember reading that they were concentrating on their procedurally-generated city technology, and would figure out the gameplay later. Now, I've not been following the development, but a mention crops up every now and then and I had yet to read anything which sounded like they'd figured out the gameplay.

Classic Introversion, frankly.

Darwinia was nice, mind -- I loved all the retro touches they packed into it.

I loved Uplink, but neither Darwinia nor Defcon managed to hook me so when I heard Subversion would be a spiritual successor I was pretty excited. Sad to see it put on indefinite hold like this, but I wish there were more details on this new game.

I thought that they had already a good grasp on the game, leading a team to perform heists with all the freedom possible. That is actually quite a neat concept. Shame, I was really looking forward to the game.